City of York Council's lack of vision and imagination comes to the fore yet again with its reluctance to develop Piccadilly for the future benefit of the city ('Stagnation fear',May 9).

In being unduly hesitant to accept the planning application - on the face of it, one of the best to be proposed in York for a good decade - put forward by Martin Burgess, the professional frumps in St Leonard's Place are digging their own graves.

York's planners don't like rocking the boat, so we end up with bland, dull, boring new buildings such as the complex of flats nearing completion in Skeldergate and the one yet to begin opposite this Piccadilly site in Merchantgate, which was quaintly described by the planners are being "neo-baroque". Neo-Basingstoke is more like.

Apart from the fact that this would be a good-looking building and a real contribution to the urban fabric of York, this must also be the only planning application for a city centre apartment complex to be rejected in recent memory.

But the real reason for this is quite clear in your article - it screws up the council's plan for Coppergate II by sizeably reducing the amount of land for this development.

It is this development that York council, on behalf of one of Europe's largest specialist developers of shopping malls, is still backing to the hilt.

Paul Furness,

Lower Darnborough Street, York.

Updated: 10:45 Monday, May 16, 2005